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18052012

OK, I think the next thing I’ll be working on for the Resources section is Official Correspondence. This will be from The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 2 (Serial No. 2). I just have to figure out how I’m going to set those pages up so they’re easy to find and use. I guess it would be best to set up pages by individual names, with an index for TO and FROM with dates. Any suggestions?

2 responses

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m more than a little glad you’ll be getting to the OR Correspondence before me. I’ll have all three books of Reports on the Siege of Petersburg done probably sometime in September or October at the current rate, and then it’s on to the Correspondence for me as well.

Here is the way I am currently leaning (which probably doesn’t work as well for you due to the time differences between First Bull Run and the Siege of Petersburg, but offered up nonetheless in case it sparks an idea or two):

***
The Siege of Petersburg is divided up into 9 books in the ORs, with one book of reports and two of correspondence for each of the following time frames:
-June 12-July 31, 1864
-August 1-Dec 31, 1864
-1865

My idea within each of the six books of correspondence is as follows:
1. Have one web site post per day’s worth of Siege, with the cutoff being any letter sent before midnight belongs to that day, any post sent after is the next day.

3. I haven’t given much thought to how I’d display these other than by post (aka by day) for a given book. Since I’m working with six books, it will probably be necessary to set up some type of search page which would allow someone to find a specific piece of correspondence.
***

Alternative ways to do this might include a way to “tag” each piece of correspondence with the specifics for TO, FROM, DATE AND TIME SENT, which would provide you as the editor to make it easier to search on these items. At times I’ve even thought of just creating a MySQL database to house everything and build pages dynamically using PHP. I don’t know if I’ll go that high tech, however.

Oops, part of my comment just tagged itself because you allow HTML code in your comments section. Here’s an updated #2 above so it makes more sense:

2. For each piece of correspondence within a day, come up with a brief shorthand “title” to use with the html “a name=” code. This “tags” the spot in the post where that specific piece of correspondence lives and allows me to link people directly to it in other articles. Let’s say Hancock sent a message to Grant at 1:15 P.M. on June 18, 1864. My shorthand title in the “a name=” code would be “Hancock_Grant_1315_18640618” and would be placed in the HTML code at the start of that piece of correspondence.

Dulce bellum inexpertis

“I am sending you these little incidents as I hear them well authenticated. They form, to the friends of the parties, part of the history of the glorious 21st. More anon.”

About

Hello! I’m Harry Smeltzer and welcome to Bull Runnings, where you'll find my digital history project on the First Battle of Bull Run which is organized under the Bull Run Resources section. I'll also post my thoughts on the processes behind the project and commentary on the campaign, but pretty much all things Civil War are fair game. You'll only find musings on my “real job” or my personal life when they relate to this project. My mother always told me "never discuss politics or religion in mixed company”, and that's sound advice where current events are concerned.

The Project

This site is more than a blog. Bull Runnings also hosts digitized material pertaining to First Bull Run. In the Bull Run Resources link in the masthead and also listed below are links to Orders of Battle, After Action Reports, Official Correspondence, Biographical Sketches, Diaries, Letters, Memoirs, Newspaper Accounts and much, much more. Take some time to surf through the material. This is a work in process with no end in sight, so check back often!